Short-Form Video Strategist (Contract)

At NerdWallet, we’re on a mission to bring clarity to all of life’s financial decisions, and every great mission needs a team of exceptional Nerds. As a contractor, you’ll work alongside our full-time team members on meaningful projects in an inclusive, flexible, and collaborative environment. This is a temporary role, but you’ll have real ownership and contribute to tangible results.

NerdWallet is looking for an experienced short-form video strategist to grow our award-winning podcasts across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts, and to turn that attention into subscribers, leads, and lasting audience relationships.

Our Content Marketing Team helps people know, trust, and love NerdWallet by delivering them great content in the channels and formats they turn to most for financial advice. In this role, you'll grow our audiences and move them toward deeper engagement with NerdWallet, from newsletter subscriptions to NerdWallet Wealth Partners leads. You’ll do this by turning our best podcast moments, host-led originals, and trending videos into platform-native Shorts, Reels, and TikToks across NerdWallet's growing podcast portfolio, including NerdWallet’s Smart Money Podcast, Smart Travel, and Your Next Dollar.

Reporting to the Content Marketing Manager, Podcasts, you'll partner with podcast hosts, content marketing strategists, and production editors, setting the strategy and leading community management across various channels. Your scope will vary by show. For Smart Travel, you'll run the TikTok and Instagram accounts end to end: strategy, content calendar, copy, publishing, and community engagement. For Smart Money, you'll own the YouTube Shorts program. For Your Next Dollar, you'll own day-to-day channel execution and support short-form strategy in partnership with the NerdWallet Wealth Partners team, which sets channel strategy and retains final approval.

This is a strategy and packaging role, not an editing role. Video editing and design are handled by NerdWallet's production editors; you'll direct that work through clear briefs and fast feedback. Success is measured on audience growth, engagement, and mid-funnel results — newsletter subscriptions, leads, and other actions that connect content to business outcomes — along with the quality of your platform-native judgment.

Where you can make an impact:

• Analyze performance and make optimizations: You'll use analytics tools such as YouTube Studio, Instagram Insights, TikTok Analytics, and Sprout Social to identify trends, surface learnings, and propose actionable recommendations to improve content performance, audience growth, and mid-funnel results. You'll communicate learnings to cross-functional stakeholders to optimize and improve channel benchmarks and results going forward.

• Develop and own content calendars: You'll create and maintain video-first, channel-optimized content calendars for the short-form channels associated with each podcast, coordinating production schedules and release plans that align with NerdWallet's brand and business goals.

• Research, plan, and optimize content strategies: You'll develop and refine short-form video and social strategies across YouTube Shorts, Instagram, and TikTok, identifying opportunities to expand reach, boost engagement, and attract new audiences. This includes moving quickly on trends while balancing speed with brand and compliance standards.

• Convert attention into action: You'll design content and calls to action that move viewers down the funnel, growing newsletter subscriptions, driving traffic to NerdWallet resources, and generating leads for NerdWallet Wealth Partners.

• Craft platform-optimized storytelling: You'll shape how each podcast shows up across platforms by writing and optimizing hooks, titles, captions, and social copy in each platform's native dialect to drive discovery and engagement.

• Coordinate posting and content approvals: You'll brief and collaborate with video editors and content strategists to review and approve short-form and social assets, ensuring they align with platform best practices and NerdWallet's brand voice. You’ll also handle uploading, scheduling, and publishing final content to YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and other platforms. This role focuses on content strategy, not on audio or video production.

• Engage our audience: You'll identify NerdWallet's role in the day-to-day conversation on the channels our consumers love most and leverage audience engagement and community management tactics to grow our audience in these spaces.

You are:

• Video-first and digitally fluent: You understand how short-form content performs differently on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts, and you're skilled at thinking strategically about how to grow and engage audiences across these channels. You know how to authentically integrate brands into cultural conversations in a way that builds brand trust.

• Podcast-savvy: You appreciate the power of podcasts, listen to the shows you work on, and understand how to translate great audio storytelling into engaging video and social moments. You may have supported a podcast through marketing or social promotion and are eager to learn more about podcast strategy and growth from experienced colleagues.

• Analytical and insights-driven: You're comfortable interpreting data and translating it into recommendations that inform creative and strategic decisions.

• Collaborative and curious: You thrive in a cross-functional environment, working with podcast hosts, content marketing strategists, and video editors to develop creative solutions. You know how to get great work out of editors through clear briefs and sharp feedback. You're also eager to learn and open to feedback.

• A clear communicator: You write with clarity, purpose, and brand voice in mind. Whether it's a Shorts hook or an Instagram caption, you know how to tailor content to each audience and platform.

• Curious and creative: You're an out-of-the-box thinker who takes risks and never stops learning how to leverage available technologies to engage audiences in the channels they love.

• AI-fluent: You actively use AI tools like Claude to accelerate drafting, research, and analysis, while applying your own editorial judgment and following disclosure requirements.

• Results-oriented and biased-to-action: You have a passion for using data to build marketing campaigns that solve business problems and advance our brand narrative. You're comfortable operating with ambiguity, managing multiple campaigns simultaneously, and taking ownership. You think full-funnel: audience growth is the starting point, and you know how to design content that converts attention into subscribers and leads.

Your experience:

• You have 3–5 years of experience in short-form video strategy or social media marketing — ideally with some exposure to podcast marketing or promotion — and can point to audiences you've grown on TikTok, Instagram, and/or YouTube Shorts.

• You've used organic social and video content to drive measurable mid-funnel outcomes like newsletter signups, site traffic, or lead generation, and can speak to how you measured them.

• You have an in-depth knowledge of social platforms and tools including YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok, as well as social listening, scheduling, and reporting/analytics tools.

• You have experience writing engaging, on-brand copy for digital and social platforms, and can demonstrate how your work has driven engagement and audience growth.

• You're comfortable interpreting performance data using tools like YouTube Studio, Instagram Insights, and TikTok Analytics, and you know how to translate those insights into actionable recommendations.

• You're familiar with creative tools such as Adobe Premiere Pro, CapCut, or Adobe Express — enough to write informed briefs and give precise feedback to editors, though editing is not part of this role.

• You've collaborated cross-functionally with teams across content, design, and video, managing multiple priorities in a fast-paced environment.

• You've helped differentiate your brand from the competition and can demonstrate a clear understanding of brand positioning, consumer personas, and channels. You can point to clear examples of how your optimized strategies have improved business impact.

• You've routinely project-managed creative strategies from brief to execution to results.